Pete McCloskey Movie: Leading from the Front

Posted on | July 1, 2009 | 3 Comments

If you’re in the San Francisco area on Sunday July 5th at 6 p.m., then check out the hour-long documentary on KQED Channel 9, Pete McCloskey: Leading from the Front. Pete McCloskey, a former California Republican Congressman, is best known for co-authoring the Endangered Species Act in 1973.

The above image from the Eastern Sierras was licensed for the project.

Nature Photography Multimedia Video

Posted on | June 28, 2009 | 7 Comments

Nature Photography Multimedia Video

Since giving the nature photography lecture at the Sierra Club in March, I had been looking for ways to get parts of my presentation online. It wasn’t until I picked up the Canon 5D Mark II recently that I was able to figure out how to put all of the pieces together. I get a little chuckle out of that too because before I got the camera I was thinking how the HD video was more for marketing the camera than it was for actual professional use and how I wasn’t going to bother with it. That thought quickly got dispelled as soon as I tried out video mode because it is pretty awesome!

There were some issues with getting the video formatted for the web since the video was initially optimized for wide-screen HD TV’s. Also some of the footage I intended to include was unrenderable by my computer so I had to use an alternative clip. Either way, putting this together has been a learning experience. Hope you enjoy the video.

Top 10 Most Influential Nature Photographers of All-Time

Posted on | June 25, 2009 | 19 Comments

To be considered for this list of the top 10 most influential nature photographers of all-time, the photographers had to have left a lasting impact either on society or on future photographers. Most of these photographers can be considered revolutionary in their own right as opposed to evolutionary which is the category in which the majority of photographers fall under. There are many photographers in recent years who have made a name for themselves in the digital era but it is too soon to know who from this era will leave a lasting historical impact on future generations.

1. Ansel Adams - The grandfather of landscape photography. He is the one nature photographer that transcends the genre and even photography for that matter. His images are so well-known that photographers and tourists-alike are still trying to fill his tripod holes 60 - 70 years after his most famous images were made. Perhaps his greatest legacy were his environmental conservation efforts with the Sierra Club that led to creation of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks among other areas, and also the art education institutions that he helped to create.

2. Galen Rowell - A well-rounded photojournalist with a special ability to connect with a vast audience through his writings, Rowell influenced countless photographers in multiple genres beginning with rock climbing, wilderness adventure and then eventually landscape photography in the 2nd half of his career. The list of current working photographers that have followed in his footsteps reads like a who’s who in outdoor adventure and landscape photography and number too many to list. He was one of the first to utilize 35mm cameras exclusively in outdoor photography and popularized the use of graduated neutral-density filters.

3. William Henry Jackson - One of the early pioneers of landscape photography, Jackson’s photos were instrumental in the creation of the National Parks system beginning with Yellowstone National Park in 1872. Not to go unmentioned should be the fact that this was essentially the first of a long-tradition of using nature photography as a catalyst for environmental conservation efforts.

4. Eliot Porter - In contrast with Ansel Adams’ big landscape style, Porter’s photos were more “quiet” and focused on the intimate landscape scenes that are easily overlooked. It is easy to overlook his body of work of postcard views but one needs to only look at the photographers that he influenced to see that his work has left a lasting impact. Photographers including William Neill and Charlie Cramer have styles that bear a strong resemblance to Porter’s vision. His most famous body of work is arguably the book, In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World.

5. David Muench - Like Ansel Adams did with black and white landscape photography a generation prior, Muench is synonymous with color landscape photography. The now-cliche’d use of prominent foreground elements leading the eye through the frame to the background in the distance was a style that Muench became known for back in the 50’s and 60’s. You would walk into any library or bookstore in America in the past 40 years and be hard-pressed to not see his books or calendars even if you don’t know his name.

6. Carleton Watkins - Created some of the earliest known images of Yosemite National Park which helped to spark interest in the western landscape.

7. Philip Hyde - A top Sierra Club photographer in the 50 - 70’s, Hyde’s photography was instrumental in campaigns to save southwestern landscapes from flooding due to dams including the Grand Canyon and Dinosaur National Monument which led to the birth of the modern environmental movement. A number of leading nature photographers cite him as an inspiration for their life’s work.

8. Robert Glenn Ketchum - He is arguably the most prominent conservation photographer working today. His photography is actively used to further environmental causes in the American political system. His aerial photography of Alaskan landscapes are especially stunning.

9. John Shaw - The author of several best-selling nature photography how-to books he is often credited with helping beginning photographers to improve their photography and is still a leading figure in the workshop market today.

10. Arthur Morris - A sign of an influential photographer is one that is often imitated, and one would be hard-pressed to see any bird photography that doesn’t bear Morris’ influence. He is arguably the most prolific bird photographer of all-time and runs a successful birding workshop business.

Honorable Mentions: Art Wolfe, David Doubilet, Subhankar Banerjee

I tried my best to remove my bias from creating this list by judging solely on resume and lasting impact on future generations of photographers. It is no secret that Galen Rowell was my biggest influence in photography but even if he weren’t, I would probably still rank him in a similar fashion. I’m also a fan of many more contemporary photographers so perhaps in ten years there might be some new names on this list that reflect the digital era. On the flip side, just because they are on this list doesn’t necessarily mean that I am a fan of their photography either but their accomplishments deserve to be recognized. With that said, I believe that valid arguments could be made for the ordering of any of the top four photographers on this list.

I’m interested in hearing what others think and if you think anyone has been left out. So if you would like to participate, then feel free to leave your list within the comments or create a blog post on your blog with your own list of most influential nature photographers and include the relevant link in the comment section.

Recommended Photo Gear

Posted on | June 20, 2009 | No Comments

If you frequent my blog you might have noticed the “Recommended Gear” link at the upper right corner. I’ve been working on updating this with equipment that I think aspiring professional photographers in the travel and landscape genres should own. At the minimum this gear should be enough to create images that are accepted at all major stock photo agencies. Though I am an affiliate of B&H Photo in New York, that in no way has shaped my opinion on this equipment. I’ve never been afraid to say when I think something is a waste of money or is inadequate and that still hasn’t changed.

So feel free to check out this new section of my blog. I will be updating it with more gear eventually.

New Mexico Photo Gallery Update

Posted on | June 15, 2009 | 4 Comments

I updated my website’s gallery of New Mexico pictures with photos from the recent trip. I’m kind of tapped out on travel photography so the next time I visit New Mexico I’d like to focus on landscapes and nature photography. Locations I’m considering are White Sands National Monument, Shiprock, and Bosque Del Apache National Monument. But of course if it’s a winter trip then I will have to re-visit Santa Fe and Albuquerque to photograph some luminarias.

New Mexico State Capitol

Posted on | June 13, 2009 | 2 Comments

As the only round capitol in the United States, the New Mexico State Capitol building has a unique look. As such, it also doesn’t really stand out as being “the capitol” building either when you are walking around Santa Fe. Perhaps because the city is blessed with such historic architecture that it just kind of blends in. They have an interesting way of lighting up the building at night though.

See more of my New Mexico pictures.

The Plaza

Posted on | June 11, 2009 | 2 Comments

The weather didn’t cooperate for long in Santa Fe as I had time to briefly walk around the Plaza and Canyon Road before a heavy thunderstorm complete with hail and lighting arrived. Having no umbrella I must have spent 2+ hours in a cafe and the underhang of a retirement home just to avoid getting struck by lightning on the way back to my car. It was scared (poop)-less to say the least. This was one of the few pictures I managed to take.

See more of my New Mexico pictures.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial State Park

Posted on | June 10, 2009 | 4 Comments

Heading up to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial turned out to be my best decision of the entire trip. It just felt right to photograph this on Memorial Day weekend. The only other person there was this vet who I spoke with briefly. He seemed like a real nice guy. Neither of us realized that the chapel was open 24 hours so that was kind of a bummer to find out later but this was definitely a great morning to be out and about. It is not hard to wake up at 4:30 a.m. when you are near a place like this.

See more of my New Mexico pictures.

Moreno Valley

Posted on | June 9, 2009 | 4 Comments

I would be posting a picture of the San Francisco de Asis Church in Rancho de Taos right now but my sunrise photo shoot never materialized. I got up before 5 a.m. and drove over to the church expecting to see some flood lights illuminating the exterior but that was not to be. The sky behind the Sangre de Cristos was already starting to get brighter and I had no idea what to do as a backup plan. So I must have driven past the church two or three times vacsillating between the Rio Grande River or the bridge again before deciding to just head up the mountains which I had never been before and saw a sign for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial State Park 30 miles away or so. I figured what the heck, Memorial Day is tomorrow and I probably am going to be out of place to catch any great sunrise light so lets just go for a long early morning drive with no expectations. Somehow I got lucky and made it there just in time to catch the tail end of the sunrise alpenglow.

The memorial is located on a little hill above Moreno Valley so there were some spectacular views from up there because the valley is largely undeveloped. The landscape actually reminded me of the Flagstaff area which is one of my favorite places in the southwest. I made this photo just after pulling into the parking lot.

See more of my New Mexico pictures.

Taos Plaza

Posted on | June 8, 2009 | No Comments

After having spent at awesome day at Santa Fe Plaza two years ago during a business trip, I was expecting Taos Plaza to be at least equally as cool. A friend of mine had talked about Taos quite a bit also in the past so that added to the expectations. Turns out that I really didn’t find Taos Plaza to be interesting at all. I took two snapshots of the statue in the middle of the plaza but that was about it.  This little side alley with southwestern style window bars caught my eye however so I waited around until after everyone cleared out of the scene before taking a few photos. The rain started up again right after this so I didn’t get to do any night photography like I had intended to.

See more of my New Mexico pictures.

Canon 5D Mark II Wide Angle Lens Test

Posted on | June 7, 2009 | 6 Comments

Most camera and lens tests you see on the internet or in magazines are set up indoor shots in controlled conditions. While nice, it really has little relevance with “real world” photography so that is why I decided to publish this Canon 5D Mark II wide angle lens test between the highly-regarded but expensive and bulky Canon 24-70mm L lens versus the Tamron 17-35mm f2.8-4 lens which is a lightweight lower priced lens. Image quality / portability is everything for nature photographers. Unless a bird photographer, we don’t care about custom functions and auto focus. Barrel distortion, chromatic aberration, contrast, center and corner sharpness are what separate good lenses from average to the mediocre. A proper lens test would have to evaluate various focal lengths and apertures from f8 to f16.

So here are the results from my detail / sharpness test:

f16 Center Sharpness: These crops were from the center of the images, which the Canon 24-70mm lens is showing more detail in the rocks and higher overall contrast. This could make a big difference for large prints (16 x 24 and larger) and for murals. Most important if you have a picky stock photo agency then any image from this lens combination should pass quality control no matter how detailed the image. Also keep in mind that most images won’t place such a great emphasis on small details such as this forest scene.

Priced at nearly $1,000 less than the Canon 24-70mm lens, the Tamron 17-35mm lens is not bad at all when it comes to center sharpness though less capable of revealing the fine detail in the rocks. Neither lens has any visible chromatic aberration in the center of the image.

f16 Corner Sharpness: This is where the most obvious difference between the two lenses are. While both lenses are showing a fair amount of chromatic aberration in the corners, the Tamron lens looks like a blurry picture whereas the corner detail from the Canon lens is still looks like that of the same image for the most part.

f8 Center Sharpness: There isn’t much difference in center sharpness between the two lenses at f8 which one of the sharpest apertures for most lenses.

f8 Corner Sharpness: As for corner sharpness however, there is no contest. The Canon 24-70mm lens maintains sharpness throughout the frame. The Tamron is unusable for landscape photography at f8.

Conclusion: If you are a landscape photographer with any intentions of selling your work professionally then you should pay whatever money you need to in order to get a great lens. It doesn’t make sense to buy a $3,000 camera and worry about what the lenses cost. People often get this part wrong. It should be the inverse, buy the best lens you can afford then upgrade the camera whenever you have the money to do so. The greatest camera in the world can’t produce detail the lens is incapable of producing. Also, the income you will lose out on in marketable images is much more than the difference in what lens cost.

The Tamron lens is an awesome walk-around lens on crop sensor cameras such as the Canon 50D but on a full-frame camera the corner sharpness is just unacceptable at 24mm. The Canon 24-70mm lens is definitely worth the money but I would be interested in comparing it with wide angle prime lenses to see if this is really as good as it gets. I didn’t want the more versatile Canon 24-105mm IS lens packaged with the 5D Mark II because I knew that it would suffer from the same issues as the Tamron 17-35mm lens on a full-frame camera if not worse in some regards at the widest settings.

As for the Tamron 17-35mm lens, I will probably only use this lens on the 5D Mark II as an ultra wide angle for seascapes at f16 where fine details are less obvious or if I need to cut weight for a hike. I am also going to do a barrel distortion test at the beach in the near future with these same two lenses to confirm my conclusions from this test.

Canon 5D Mark II HD Video

Posted on | June 6, 2009 | 4 Comments

Canon 5D Mark II HD Video

I took the camera out to a local park in the foothills for my first official test run. I clearly have a lot to learn about videography. (I’m not even in focus!)

Taking a break from New Mexico blog posts, tomorrow’s blog post will probably be of interest to my photographer friends who are thinking about purchasing a 5D MKII so stay tuned.

Rainbow of Christ

Posted on | June 4, 2009 | 3 Comments

Sangre de Cristo when translated to english means, “Blood of Christ.”

See more of my New Mexico pictures.

Rio Grande Gorge

Posted on | June 3, 2009 | 7 Comments

Visiting the Rio Grande Gorge wasn’t in my plans initially but since I got rained out of Taos my options were to either sleep the rest of the day away or drive to the gorge and just take a look regardless if I took any photos or not. It turned out to be a good decision as it stopped raining for about 20 minutes when I first got there.

I’ll let you in on a little secret… I am terrified of heights! As you can tell, the bridge is located way above the Rio Grande River… So I nervously walked out onto the bridge without my camera gear. I couldn’t even look over the edge and had to walk along the far edge of the sidewalk just looking straight. It was embarrassing to say the least. I made it to the middle and briefly looked over the edge before returning back to the car to retrieve my camera gear.

I don’t know what it was about the 2nd time crossing the bridge but I wasn’t nervous anymore. No clammy hands, no holding my breath, nothing but pure eye contact with the gorge. Perhaps it was because I had a Sierra Club backpack on this time that gave me super powers to conquer my fears or maybe something just clicked that said, “No pain, no gain.” Whatever it was, the Rio Grande Gorge is awesome.

See more of my New Mexico pictures.

Southwestern Doorways

Posted on | June 1, 2009 | No Comments

I am drawn to old architectural styles much more than the modern stuff you will see out on the west coast. I managed to get this photo during a brief window of time when it wasn’t raining outside. On one hand it was nice to get diffused lighting on all of my subjects while on the other hand, rain isn’t good for the camera gear…

See more of my New Mexico pictures.

The Holy Cross

Posted on | May 30, 2009 | 3 Comments

St. Jerome Chapel at Taos Pueblo is one of the most photographed landmarks in the southwest but I preferred the simple composition of focusing on the cross hinting at an incoming storm of biblical proportions.

See more of my New Mexico pictures.

A Nation Within a Nation

Posted on | May 29, 2009 | 2 Comments

I felt a strong sense of irony when I saw the U.S. flag hanging within the door frame of a home at Taos Pueblo. To give a little background, right before I photographed this flag, the tour guide had been gleefully talking about how their sacred Blue Lake had been taken over by the U.S. and placed it under the National Parks system in the early 20th century. After years of legal fighting, the territory was returned back to the Red Willow people and is now only accessible to their people.

“Well god bless you.”, was the response from one of the tourists.

See more of my New Mexico pictures.

Taos Pueblo

Posted on | May 28, 2009 | 2 Comments

Built more than 1,000 years ago, Taos Pueblo is a fascinating place to explore. So much so that it is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This was the first time that I have been to a world heritage site that I am aware of.

If you are familiar with southwestern art and photography then you have probably seen ladders in many of the pieces. Our tour guide explained the reason for the ladders was to protect the residents (Red Willow) from outside invaders. The entrances to their adobe homes were located on the 2nd floor historically so they pulled up the ladders when not in use.

Another interesting thing about Taos Pueblo is that the full-time residents choose to keep their culture alive and thus have no running water nor electricity indoors.

See more of my New Mexico pictures.

Memorial Day

Posted on | May 26, 2009 | 8 Comments

Yesterday morning.

New Mexico

Posted on | May 12, 2009 | 6 Comments

This month I’m going back to New Mexico. I’ve made some good agency and print sales from the images I got on my previous trip two years ago and I’ve also wanted to photograph Taos for a while now so I’m pretty excited. On the way back to Albuquerque, I’m also planning to stop off at Santa Fe and photograph the things I missed last time which include the State Capitol building and some architecture along Canyon Road. New Mexico is such a colorful place.

keep looking »

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